The Classical Liberal Vision of “Negative Liberty” vs the Welfare State Vision of “Positive Liberty”

In 2010, I contemplated the challenging issue of libertarians and patriotism. My view, for what it’s worth, is captured by this t-shirt.

In 2011, I pondered research about the partisan implications of patriotism and the 4th of July.

In 2012, I shared an inspirational video about freedom and individualism from Ronald Reagan.

In 2013, I discussed the proper meaning of patriotism in the aftermath of revelations about NSA snooping.

In 2014, I decided on a humorous approach with one a Remy video about government being “up in your grill.”

In 2015, I waded into the controversial topic of what happens when flag burning meets the modern regulatory state.

In 2016, I looked at how government has increased the cost of celebrating Independence Day.

I actually did two columns in 2011. I also put together a satirical Declaration of Dependence for my left-wing friends. Here’s how it started.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people should be made equal, that they are endowed by their government with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are jobs, healthcare and housing.

I’m definitely not in the same league as P.J. O’Rourke or Mark Steyn, but I thought I was being at least halfway funny and somewhat clever.

But Bernie Sanders must have read it and took it seriously, at least if this tweet is any indication.

Republicans talk a lot about freedom and choice. But you cannot truly be free if you can't afford health care or food or medicine.

In other words, he’s saying you have a “right” that is predicated on other people paying for you.

When I first saw that tweet, the first thing that came to mind was the cartoon about the choice between “work hard” and “free stuff.”

Then I thought about the failure of nations that go too far down the path of redistribution, such as Greece and Venezuela.

And I wondered whether Senator Sanders actually understands what he’s saying. In other words, is he crazy, blind, or evil?

Or perhaps immoral? In his Washington Timescolumn, Richard Rahn looked at the ethical implications.

Sen. Bernie Sanders keeps repeating that “all Americans have a right to health care” — nice applause line, but what does it mean? There is no such right mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Health care is not a free good — someone has to pay for it. Ask yourself — who should pay for your health care? …Do you have the obligation to pay for someone else’s health care? If so, how much and why? …The 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits “involuntary servitude” and slavery. At what point does a tax on someone’s labor — where the proceeds of that tax are largely used to provide income or services to others — constitute “involuntary servitude”? …Those who think they have the right to the labor of those they revile, i.e., the “rich,” have the same mentality of the slaveholder who also thought he had the right to others’ labor.

Ultimately, this is about a conflict between the classical liberal vision of “negative liberty” and the welfare state vision of “positive liberty.”

Libertarians, along with many conservatives, believe in the right to be left alone and to not be molested by government. This is sometimes referred to in the literature as “negative liberty,” which is just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual.” Statists, by contrast, believe in “positive liberty.” This means that you have a “right” to things that the government will give you… Which means, of course, that the government has an obligation to take things from somebody else. How else, after all, will the government satisfy your supposed right to a job, education, healthcare, housing, etc.

I also should have pointed out that negative liberty doesn’t impose obligations on other people. My freedom of speech doesn’t conflict with your freedom of speech. My freedom or religion doesn’t conflict with your freedom of religion. My freedom to earn and produce doesn’t conflict with your freedom to earn and produce.

But that’s not true with so-called positive liberty. If I have a “right” to health care, that means the government will use coercion. Either indirectly by using the tax code to take money from other people, or directly as explained by Senator Rand Paul.

[…] other words, my default assumption is that people should have freedom (the notion of “negative liberty“), whereas many folks on the left have a default assumption for that the state should determine […]

“In other words, he’s saying you have a “right” that is predicated on other people paying for you.”

This is what we call “The common good.” Without it we have the private good. Markets were invented to provide both, but over time people figured you can cater to whom you please. To provide a cheaper product to that indispensable portion of the labor force, you decimate compensation, merge & acquire, introduce debt, outsourcing, automation, contract work/cut overtime hours and water down service (or create boutiques) or push for public subsidies to reinvigorate demand and spread the tax cost across society.

The unbearable social strain forces people into homelessness and indigence. The indispensable portion have more abundance than they know what to do with. Eventually something happens. We’re on the precipices and will find out.
Whatever the case, such choices as “Work” vs. “Take”, “Free” vs. “Unfree” are fake dichotomies meant to punish away a problem of your own making by allowing your fears, instinctual desire to punish what you perceive as misbehavior (when they’re almost always physical manifestations of corrupt practice) and inherent mental predisposition for binarism to make sense of an obscured reality. Markets during their growth stage produce abundant means. Only later do they start to sequester them.

We don’t adequately track supply/demand or purchasing parity over time at the microeconomic level. Instead, business managers look for shortcuts. They try to steal marches on competitors by decimating their own service, demolishing human flourishing, and by undermining their workforces buying power. Like it or not, we’re interdependent. If you want buyers, foster the people who buy things. Each diminishment brings imbalance. Unfortunately, the instinct to grow is universal. Capitalism tends to destroy itself through competition within discrete units that are supposed to maintain cohesion to compete with each other.

How fitting they’re called “negative rights.” Before too long that extra liberty turns inward and cannibalize the existing rights structure. When 9/10 cents go to the riche, they’ll unlock more business to fill that insatiable satiety. Then for the common masses: more work. More to get where you were. Each new business is chasing a less ‘dynamic’, more strapped, utterly dependent consumer market. Eventually they’ll have 9.5, 9.8, 99.9 of every ten cents. Then back to the Victorian era dispensing with money, common land, possessions are confiscated to pay debts.

[…] their idea of freedom means freedom to loot, which is sometimes called – rather perversely – positive liberty. But I shouldn’t laugh too hard because the United States actually had a president with the same […]